The Top Ten Gay-Rights Heroes of 2013

The past year was one of tremendous progress toward gay and lesbian equality—perhaps the most important year for gay rights, as some have already claimed, since the Stonewall rebellion, in 1969. The many milestones of the past twelve months looked, at times, like a revolution that had transpired overnight, but they represented the culmination of work that took place over decades and came together in one remarkable year.

Still, there were a number of key individuals who played important roles in 2013; heroes, who by their words or actions stood out as worthy of particular recognition. Here is my list:

1. Edith Windsor

Unquestionably the most significant gay-rights figure of 2013, the eighty-four-year-old Windsor not only brought down the Defense of Marriage Act with her case in the Supreme Court, but she did it with a style and grace that elevated everyone associated with the gay-rights movement. She showed a combination of beauty, courage, candor, and youthful sassiness that made her seem even more luminous. Windsor had a difficult time finding lawyers to take her case, but as Ariel Levy’s stunning and emotional Profile of Windsor demonstrated, she turned out to be the perfect hero for the cause.

2. Pope Francis

In July, when a reporter asked Pope Francis about allegations of a “gay lobby” inside the Vatican, his straightforward answer, with the five words that made headlines around the world—“Who am I to judge?”—was what gay Catholics, and many others, had long been waiting to hear. While the Church has not formally shifted any of its positions on homosexuality, and it remains to be seen whether Catholic institutions will become more welcoming toward gays and lesbians (as Frank Bruni highlighted in a recent column), the new Pope’s language was a stark departure from that of earlier Catholic leaders, who characterized homosexuality as morally wrong and often evil. It is clear that Francis has decided to set a different tone—and that these comments were part of the reason that the editors of Time magazine named him their Person of the Year.

3. Anthony Kennedy

Justice Kennedy authored the sweeping opinion for the five-to-four majority in United States v. Windsor, striking down DOMA while declaring that gay Americans were entitled to “dignity” and holding that the Constitution protects their “moral and sexual choices.” Many believe that Kennedy’s opinion opened the door for the Supreme Court to deliver another big gay-rights decision, which would recognize a constitutional right to same-sex marriage and full equality. (Kennedy also authored the Court’s two earlier major pro-gay-rights decisions, in Romer v. Evans and Lawrence v. Texas.) After the Windsor decision, the Supreme Court correspondent for the New York Times, Adam Liptak, called Kennedy “the most important judicial champion of gay rights in the nation’s history.”

4. Barack Obama

President Obama continued his “evolution” with a breathtakingly bold inaugural address, in which he compared the struggle for gay rights to the movements for women’s rights and African-American civil rights, and then said: “Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law—for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well.” This year also saw Obama’s Department of Justice submit key amicus briefs to the Supreme Court in support of overturning DOMA and returning marriage equality to California, which likely made it easier, politically, for the Court to rule as it did. Both his inaugural remarks and the briefs signalled a new Presidential aggressiveness on gay rights.

5. Ted Olson and David Boies

The two lawyers behind the successful challenge to California’s anti-gay, and anti-marriage, Proposition 8, Olson and Boies were famous for having represented the opposing sides in the epic legal battle that followed the 2000 Presidential election. But their willingness to step forward as both a legal dream team and a kind of bipartisan odd-couple for gay rights not only attracted wide attention from the media—which the two lawyers cleverly used to further educate the public on the issue—but also brought amazing new energy and life to the crusade. Olson and Boies didn’t get everything they wanted from the Supreme Court, which declined to find a broad constitutional right to same-sex marriage, but they were able to convince the Justices that marriage equality could not be repealed by referendum in California. And they are not done yet: at the end of September, they joined a new case in Virginia against the state’s sweeping law banning same-sex marriages and civil unions, which they hope will be the vehicle for an broader ruling from the Supreme Court.

6. Russian L.G.B.T. activists

When Vladimir Putin decided to start a political crusade demonizing Russia’s gays and lesbians—to divert attention from increasing popular discontent with his rule and the country’s looming economic problems, while also currying favor with powerful conservative religious elements—he surely did not expect the fight that Russian activists and their supporters have put up against him. That these activists have done so without very much help from the mainstream international human-rights community makes it all the more impressive. Putin seems to have persuaded the International Olympic Committee, multinational corporate Olympic sponsors, and NBC Universal, which is televising the Games, that his anti-gay crusade is nothing to be concerned with. But it remains to be seen if the Olympics will go off without a hitch, or if there will be, as some expect, significant disruptions. As one activist, Anastasia Smirnova, told David Remnick, “We can’t allow ourselves to be seen as people who are something less than human.”

7. Rob Portman and Will Portman

In March, the Ohio Senator Rob Portman, an important member of the Republican Party establishment, and who was on Mitt Romney’s Vice-Presidential shortlist, became the first sitting Republican senator to support marriage equality, two years after his son Will, then a nineteen-year-old Yale freshman, came out to his parents. In an op-ed supporting gay marriage in the Columbus Dispatch, Portman wrote that he and his wife were “proud of [Will] for his honesty and courage. We were surprised to learn he was gay, but knew he was still the same person he’d always been. The only difference was that now we had a more complete picture of the son we love.” Portman was criticized for making a political shift for personal reasons, until everyone remembered that politics is always, first and foremost, about your own personal experience.

8. Chad Griffin and Evan Wolfson

These two “frenemies” run the most important gay-rights organizations in the United States: Griffin is the president of the Human Rights Campaign, and Wolfson is the founder and president of Freedom to Marry. They have clashed over the timing of Griffin’s earlier effort to challenge California’s Proposition 8 on the broadest constitutional grounds, which Wolfson believed was undertaken too soon. (Call that one a draw.) Griffin’s organization is a marketing and fundraising powerhouse which is focussed on lobbying in Washington. Wolfson thinks that the better approach is a state-by-state fight for marriage equality, which he argues would lead to a national mandate from the Supreme Court once it gathers enough momentum. Together, they are the most powerful duo in the gay-rights movement, and perhaps it is fortunate that they are pursuing different but complementary strategies.

9. Tico Almeida and Jane Clementi

Almeida and Clementi lead much smaller gay-rights organizations, but they have had an outsized impact. Almeida, a lawyer and former Capitol Hill staffer, started Freedom to Work, in order to press for the passage of the long-stalled Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which protects gays, lesbians, and transgendered Americans from employment discrimination. The Senate finally passed the bill this year (though it will likely die in the House)—and much of the credit for that milestone should go to Almeida.

In 2010, the Rutgers University student Tyler Clementi took his own life after his roommate used a webcam to spy on his encounter with another man. (Ian Parker documented Clementi’s story in the magazine.) It’s hard to imagine how any parent could recover from such a tragedy, but Jane Clementi set out to understand not only what had happened to her own son, but to prevent it from happening to other young people. With her husband, Joseph, and her son James, she has started the Tyler Clementi Foundation to promote safe and inclusive social environments for at-risk L.G.B.T. youth. She had to work through, reconcile, and incorporate her strongly held religious beliefs in order to bring acceptance into her own life—all in a way that is inspiring to many.

10. Jason Collins and Tom Daley

In April, Jason Collins, then of the Washington Wizards, became the first active male professional athlete from a major North American team sport to come out as gay. It’s always tough, and courageous, to be the first.

And just this month, the nineteen-year-old British Olympic diver and international heartthrob Tom Daley came out in his own YouTube video (which now has over ten million views). “Right now, I’m dating a guy, and I couldn’t be happier,” Daley said. His willingness to be open about his life will no doubt help countless others who are still struggling, as will his wish not to be strictly categorized (at least for now) as gay or bisexual—a stance that reflects the thinking of many younger people. Could it be that after proving that homosexuality is not a “lifestyle choice,” we may begin to see that there can still be some fluidity where love and romance are concerned? Maybe we will find the answer to that question in 2014.

Richard Socarides is an attorney and longtime gay-rights advocate. He served in the White House during the Clinton Administration and has also been a political strategist. He now oversees public affairs at GLG. Opinions expressed here are only his own. Follow him on Twitter @Socarides.

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Richard Socarides is an attorney and longtime gay-rights advocate. He served in the White House during the Clinton Administration and has also been a political strategist. He now oversees public affairs at GLG. Opinions expressed here are only his own.